The three models are the 12big - the 12 stands for the number of SATA drives in each enclosure - Rack Filer with 4 by 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel access, Rack Network for NAS and iSCSI access over dual 1GbitE links, and Rack Serial for DAS applications featuring dual mini-SAS connections.

The Rack Serial and Rack Fiber can have redundant power supplies and cooling units with the Rack Fiber supporting dual active:active RAID controllers and a configuration offering no single point of failure.

Advanced Power Management supports drive spin-down with periodic drive screening to detect freezing through inactivity. Raid levels 0, 1, 10, 5, 50 and 6 are supported, protecting against up to two drive failures.

The products are user-serviceable with hot-swap SATA drives up to 1TB in capacity. A 12-drive base enclosure with four daisy-chained expansion units gets you to the 60TB maximum capacity. LaCie says a variety of capacities, and SAS as well as SATA drives, are supported without going into details. The products support online drive and LUN expansion.

The flagship is the Rack Fiber, with LaCie saying six 422 uncompressed HD videos can be edited in parallel. Apple's XSAN and Quantum's Stor are supported. The product has seven performance profiles, five dealing with video and audio. These features indicate a video production market focus for the product as well as more general enterprise use. You can get more information from here (pdf).

The Rack Serial is being positioned as a general enterprise DAS array with the Rack Network described as both an enterprise and small/medium business product.

LaCie's design look smarts are only given limited rein; the front casing is orange. The 12big Rack products will be available this month in various models through LaCie's channels. Pricing starts at the suggested retail price of £2,900 excluding VAT. ®